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How's the family?
Had some hard parts this week where I was overwhelmed (with temper tantrums) but I handled it all pretty well. Some highlights are that we went on a mini train, to a new zoo, a car collection, and the kiddo had his birthday.
I am trying to let him do more on his own, but he wants to do everything!
That sounds like my kids' dream week, and that's a lot to fit in there. Sounds like you're doing a great job if you can handle so much close together
Thank you! I am trying to get out there even though a lot of these places are a little outside my comfort zone.
The car museum was incredible though and I would have never gone on my own. I’ll try to attach a photo
My kids would love this place, but I'd spend the entire time trying to get them to keep their hands off everything
That was our issue. He wanted to drive every car. He was staring at a VW van and said “ I want to drive that” and one of the workers came over and said “Do you want to go in?”
He got so shy and pouty and I was thinking, my god you just missed your shot little dude. You almost had everything you wanted.
Anyways, they had a car there that was just for kids to touch and climb around on. And a small area with toy cars.
I’ll stop talking about this place now, It just exceeded all expectations.
We had our first case of one of the kids running off in a department store and needing to find them.It got us talking about 'Stranger Danger' and who the best people to approach are when you lose one of your parents. I've been thinking about it and I don't like the traditional stranger talk, because it tells kids to work off the assumption every adult they don't know is going to steal or abuse them.
We can't really tell them to look for someone in uniform at Kmart because they don't wear uniforms here anymore. I ended up finding him in the toy section, so maybe arranging a spot to find them if they get lost is the easiest way. If I tell them to go to the toy section if we get separated I know where they'll end up, it's one part of all the stores they'll know where it is, and it can help them fill in time until I get to them.
I've been thinking about it and I don't like the traditional stranger talk, because it tells kids to work off the assumption every adult they don't know is going to steal or abuse them.
That’s absolutely the right move. In abuse prevention in the US, they use the term “safe adult.” And having these conversations regularly about who is and who isn’t a safe adult is very helpful. Here’s some helpful info
(CW: discussing child SA)
https://mbfpreventioneducation.org/safe-adults/
Thank you, this is really helpful. I don't want to try make my kids scared of other adults when they're statistically not the people they should be worried about.
You got it. I used to teach this stuff. Lemme know if you want any advise about how to explain who sage adults are.
My girlfriend works in childcare so I hope we'll be able to discuss things from here. I think we agree on most things, it's just about going over the particulars
Back from vacation. I think tee trip went well! Got to check off a national park off our list. The kids seemed to enjoy it despite all the hours long car rides.
Nice to be home though. The kids were defiantly getting home stick by the end of the trip. These kids LOVE flying which is a real boon. They cackle at take off and touch down, they think its funny.
We took a family road trip from North Carolina up to Ontario this past week, and it went... really well? We braced ourselves for a hassle with driving an EV on a long trip, but it was only a minor issue once. The wife and kids were troopers whenever our plans blew up, and we always managed to find something fun to do.
I now have three weeks to convince my rising middle schooler that people not believing that she was a dragon in a past life doesn't mean that they're hostile. I'm trying to frame it as similar to a religious belief: you sincerely believe you had past animal lives, other people sincerely believe that they're going to a specific afterlife or are communicating with a god. You can still be friends, just be kind and respect each other!
Yes. It's gonna work. Everyone's gonna be cool.
The weather finally became not a death sauna outside. The little Fish have been swimming a lot. 4yo is finally putting their face in with goggles and moving their arms over the water. 2yo suddenly decided they actually like going under water now. I’m happy about our decision early on to not do floaties. It’s a lot more work, but i feel like they respect the water a lot more. We saw a kid at the pool get trapped upside down in floaties. It was kinda scary.
I feel like our stranger danger talks sort of started a few weeks earlier than this weekend when we were talking about the song Sick by 12 Foot Ninja. We both have shirts of the guy from the music video, who I got the kids to name 'Sick Man'.
They've watched the music video a few times and one of my kids was talking about how they're not allowed to go to Sick Man's house, and that if he sees Sick Man he'll push him away. It was very cute and you could see his gears whirring thinking about Sick Man and identifying how he's not a nice person. It's just great seeing the kids work these things out on their own terms and try to make sense of things.
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My oldest is starting kindergarten this month. I just found out yesterday that they are issued iPads on day 1, and they need to have these tablets with them every day. Genuinely feeling pretty upset about this. We are very lucky in that our kids seem to have absolutely no interest in tablets and phones. My wife and I (and least me) are very intentional about our time on our phones around the kids. They do have a bit of a TV addiction but I can work with that.
Where does this even come from, this idea that handing kindergartners a tablet and having them use it every day is a good idea?
Part of it is pressure from district administration, wanting to make sure they're providing a "21st century learning experience." Part of it is a result of the STEM/STEAM pushing the last decade+ that seeks tech integration at all levels to prime students to learn to code and think like an engineer or whatever to proletarianize the tech sector (it's working!). It also helps district IT budgets justify their costs and staffing. However, most importantly, and it is the primary place these policies came from, is COVID. I should know. I've been working in K12 IT for at least 12 years now.
When Covid hit, we didn't have a 1:1 Chromebook program. We definitely didn't have a 1:1 iPad program. I think at that time we only had iPads for 1st grade, and those were in carts that needed to be shared, 2 classes worth of iPads for 4 classes. Then the state and federal governments gave district IT departments a shot in the arm with all the money they were tossing around to get remote education off the ground. That shit was wild. Pallets of iPads rolling in. Money for enterprise-level Mobile Device Management software. We bootstrapped remote learning in less than a month from nothing.
Ultimately, remote schooling was a total failure. I don't know what the alternatives would be, but Kindergarten over Zoom was worthless, and every grade after that was effectively worthless for all kinds of reasons. Turns out kids need structure (shocking), and when you get rid of that structure in a sudden and abrasive way and try to replace it was what amounts to F-tier Ms. Rachael, kids fall behind.
But falling behind isn't the only legacy left behind by COVID. We now have a 1:1 program from K to 12th grade. Our IT budget has increased every year since COVID. Our team has grown with it. As the years have passed, the district has seen pushback from parents. For a few years, there were mixed signals about whether kids needed to take iPads home or not. Parents rightfully didn't like this device being forced on them and their home. Now the iPads stay in the classroom at the end of the day, so the parents have won some ground in that regard.
We're seeing some pushback about Chromebooks going home in middle school. Homework is still a thing, but now its digital, which means the Chromebooks go home. Which means YouTube goes home unless the parents are hyper vigilante. YouTube isn't simply bocked because there is so much content on the platform that is truly educational. YouTube has effectively replaced the VHS/DVD player of yesteryear. For all the parents who have gotten this far without getting their kids chained to an iPad or phone, it's a real nightmare. Mainly because the parents have no structure around devices because they never needed to. The net result of the Chromebook situation is the expansion of parental control software provided by the district to parents. It's at least a bone for the parents and gives them some control over the device, and I don't think it provides history for the parents, so it doesn't expand the panopticon into the home, thankfully.
Many districts were unable to expand their budget to accommodate this sudden growth in devices. They never hired more IT people. They never hired more or any tech integration specialists. Some might not have been able to afford the proper remote management software to lock down the devices. There is a real gap in technical skills when it comes to IT professionals in the education space, and almost every school district in the country manages MORE devices on LARGER networks with almost 1/5th the staff and skill level.
So in numerous instances, these choices are being made by untechnical people, or people who do not have a keen understanding of both technology and education, only one or the other.
I would investigate the policy of your district and see if you can have the device left in the classroom instead of taken home at the end of the day. I know that in our district, the K-level kids are really only using it a couple of times a day for very specific and vetted educational apps that aid in phonics and writing. There is no reason it should go home, from my experience.